The Man and the traffic #4: The first campaigns

Hi everyone! This is ZorbasMedia editorial team speaking.

Before we give the floor to the Man, we would also like to say a few words. It all started smoothly and seamlessly: the first campaigns were launched last week, and now we’re waiting for the results. For the sake of the experiment’s accuracy, we try not to interfere with Oleg’s working processes. It’s very interesting for us to observe what he is doing. If you have just joined our interactive project, we recommend you read the reports on the past weeks (the first, second and third volume). These reports describe in detail a journey to the world of affiliate marketing, undertaken by an absolute newbie with a single goal in mind: to become a top affiliate.

Now let’s take a look at what Oleg did last week, how he launched his first campaigns, how much money and the time he spent and what results he got. Moreover, starting with this volume, we’re giving you free access to Oleg’s tracker so that you’ll be able to monitor what Oleg is doing.

Greetings to all our readers and those who closely follow our special project, the Man and the traffic.

This week has turned out to be very busy in terms of my workload as an SEO specialist, but I tried to set aside two hours a day for affiliate marketing. I had to reconsider my daily routine: I got up at 5 a.m., which allowed me to use my energy resources most efficiently. It will take you two hours in the morning to do the same amount of work as you will do in the three or four hours in the daytime, while five-six hours of sleep are quite enough to get a good rest.

So, here’s what I did last week:

I did a research on push notifications: videos, articles, case studies, Telegram chats and so on.

I registered a domain.

I chose a hosting solution and registered it.

I set up a tracker.

I had the following plan for this week:

check out spy services for push notifications;

choose an affiliate network and dating offer;

choose a push network;

set up the tracker properly;

make creatives;

launch my first campaign.

Spy services for push notifications

For now, I have chosen Push.CPA.Rip, as this service is free of charge and has enough functions to get a general understanding of what approaches are used to make creatives. Available networks: DatsPush, MegaPush, Adsterra, Evadav, Propellerads, Tranding Bid, Mgid.

So, it’s pretty straightforward. I used the following keywords to search for dating creatives: dating, meet, chat, talk, call, let’s.

I decided to choose dating offers (mainstream and casual dating mobile sites) and drive traffic to popular English-speaking countries (English is the only foreign language I have ever worked with):

Moreover, I set up limits on platforms: mobile devices seem to be the last sanctuary of elusive individuality and privacy (after all, a cell phone has only one owner, whereas a computer may be used by several people):

I made an approximate rating that, of course, doesn’t take into account a multitude of other factors influencing the competition. However, I had to have something to proceed from. Here’s what I got (the lower the position in the rating, the higher the competition):

UK

South Africa

Canada

Australia

New Zealand

So, I decided to drive traffic to the first three GEOs and chose the following offers:

Unfortunately, there were no screenshots of landings in the offer description on the Clickdealer website. I wasn’t able to have a look at landing pages myself because I was redirected to a RU site. As far as I understand, to go to a landing page you should have the IP of the GEO an offer is targeted at. I hope that probably some of you can recommend a service or a VPN that will enable me to have a look at landings.

I was confused by a threefold difference in lead prices between Canada, England and South Africa. Well, that makes sense: different countries have different levels of economic development. The traffic for South Africa was also much cheaper. Therefore, if you start driving traffic to this GEO, you will be able to get more data for further campaign analysis for less money.

When it comes to choosing an offer for a particular country, this site below may come in handy.

Here you can choose a country and find out what language is spoken there (both official and non-official languages are stated).

In a push chat, some guys recommended registering in the following affiliate networks as well:

It will be great if you leave your opinion on these networks in the comment section below. A little bit later I’ll try to test push campaigns there as well.

Choosing a push network

Our in-house affiliate team recommended choosing the following push networks: MegaPush and PropellerAds. Our experts claim that they have the highest traffic quality.

PropellerAds

The database spans 300,000,000 users. You can divide customers into segments based on the user activity targeting option and use various optimization tools. You can also choose between the CPM and CPC pricing models.

While registering in this network, you won’t encounter any difficulties. You should just carefully fill up the registration form:

Note that the minimum deposit is $100:

MegaPush

More than 12 million clicks are processed daily in MegaPush. Overall, this ad network has earned a good reputation among its users.

The registration form is pretty much the same as that of PropellerAds. To register in the network, you will also have to give your Telegram ID and phone number:

To add a network and a traffic source from the list didn’t pose any difficulties:

Adding an offer was also an easy task. However, I messed up a little bit with creating a campaign with a traffic back link.

Dating creatives

I didn’t pay extra attention to creatives. I just searched for porno stars and beautiful teenagers most popular in a particular region. Overall, I made four creatives for each GEO. You can find my creatives for South Africa below, and I used similar creatives for other regions.

Setting up a campaign in a push network

I decided to drive traffic from one traffic source in order not to get distracted and get an in-depth understanding of how it all works. Initially, I created three campaigns in PropellerAds, but a campaign aimed at South Africa didn’t pass moderation. I had to add the second offer for this GEO and create a new ad campaign. Unfortunately, it also failed to pass moderation, as the landing page had adult content and I wasn’t able to check it. So, I was left with only two active campaigns aimed at Canada and England:

The settings were as follows: CPC, ALL traffic, User Activity — Medium.

I set the bid slightly above the recommended price. Targeting: mobile devices, Android.

The CTR for creatives is given below (GEOs: England and Canada):

Results

When I was writing this article, the campaigns were still active. There were some clicks, but no conversions yet. I wasn’t able to appreciate the advantages of using a tracker and setting it up correctly.

So, I have launched my first campaigns and now I have a lot of questions to ask. I hope you will help me to find the answers:

Should I use pre-landers if I work with dating? If yes, then what pre-landers to use? If I promote adult dating, should a pre-lander have adult content?

How can I have a look at a landing page where traffic is driven to? I see only one option here: using a VPN with the IP of the corresponding GEO. Are there any other options? What VPN can you recommend?

Which pricing model is more preferable: CPC or CPM? In my case, the CPC model has proved to be more cost-effective, but I’d like to hear your opinion.

How much traffic should I drive to understand that a given push campaign is not converting?

Why was I getting so little traffic from Canada?

Next week I will try to figure out what went wrong, try to identify my weak points and find answers to the questions above.

Here are my plans for next week:

Analyze case studies on dating, using pre-landers and choosing a database in a push network.

Find a VPN service for analyzing landing pages.

Figure out how to add a pre-lander to the tracker.

Launch a campaign in PropellerAds with the CPM pricing model and analyze the results.

Launch a campaign in MegaPush and compare the results.

Launch a campaign targeted at South Africa in PropellerAds.

Find some good training courses on push notifications.

Figure out where it’s more preferable to drive traffic to: directly to an offer, to a pre-lander with an offer or to a SmartLink?

Yours faithfully,the Man.

P.S. I’m not disappointed at all. Conversely, I have a lot of food for thought. I’m going to move further.

Now it’s time to report on the vote results. We were curious to know what your starting budget was. The results turned out to be quite surprising and motivating, as 50% of you voted that you started your journey as an affiliate marketer with a budget of less than $500.

So, as you can see, everything is possible. Now let’s see whether the Man with finally make it.

See you next week and don’t forget to answer the questions! Let’s help Oleg together! The power lies in the community.

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